Meeting with Cryne and Mansford

The big news from last night seems to be the fee received for John Stones, but was this news, or was it already on public record.

Back in January 2014, I wrote a commentary on the BFC Accounts to 31 May 2013. (Unfortunately, I cannot find the thread that I started at that time). Included in those accounts was a figure of £3,237,387 for Transfer Fees Received. This figure covered the fees received in respect of the sales of Butterfield, Davies and Stones. We already knew the fee for Butterfield was around £700,000, which left around £2,537,387 for Davies and Stones. We already knew before yesterday, therefore, that the Stones fee was considerably less than the £3,000,000 advertised widely at the time. The only question remaining was what the split of the remainder was between Davies and Stones.

In truth, the transfer fee that Barnsley could have expected for Stones could never be expected to match the fee that Everton could expect to receive for the player. Expectations of this board on the size of fee that the club should have received for all player with so few games under his belt and based upon hindsight are frankly unrealistic. Stones would never be able to prove himself at the level of Premiership football whilst playing for Barnsley in the Championship. As soon as it becomes clear to a player that he could earn 10 or 15 times his current wage, he is bound to want to move on, and there is a strong argument to suggest that the club should not stand in his way. No, the issue is not really so much the fee that the club received at the time, it is what add on clauses were negotiated for additional fees based upon appearances, international appearances and sell on clauses. This is where the interest lies for me and not the confirmation of news that is already in the public domain.

As others have pointed out, the question is more why Cryne and Mansford decided to reveal this information at this time. The cynic in me wonders if they decided that they could deflect some of the criticism directed towards the current management by pointing out the major failings of previous management (Flitcroft and Rowing). For all their good works, did WSB and its praiseworthy representatives who arranged the meeting simply have their communal belly tickled by a couple in the business of avoiding difficult questions?

 

Surely the bigger value is that for a sell-on which we are told there is a substantial one.

20% of a £25m move a tasty £5m for example

 

No.

 

Exactly the point I am making. Posters are focusing their anger upon the initial fee rather than the possible total fee. Was there any mention of the add on clauses in the Stones agreement with Everton, or are we all still guessing.

The more important point that I am making is that the information was already in the public domain, albeit not noticed by the majority of contributors to the BBS. Was the main reason for the release of the information in order to deflect criticism from the current management by deflecting it towards past management.

 

No just asked the same questions half a dozen times.

 

You say we couldn't expect a higher fee for him for the reasons you mention, so how do other clubs (Posh, Blades, Leeds) manage to get big money? Even when their players have only proved themselves in L1 they receive bigger fees.

 

I think you have missed the point. To me the revelation was not the fee but the fact that Cryne said that Stones's ability was not really appreciated. I just cannot take that statement without being flabbergasted. The only football expertise I have is watching matches for the last 50 years but having seen Stones play half a dozen times it was obvious he had something really special. I was proud to be boasting in the pub up here that we had a young lad at Barnsley who I predicted would go on to play for England for many years. I've never said that about any player before and probably never will again so how come I and virtually every other supporter could see his talent but the people in charge at Barnsley couldn't?
I repeat that this is stuff that came out of Cryne's mouth, not speculation.

 

Leeds are massive.
Peterborough under fergie have an excellent reputation for finding youg non league players and polishing them
Sufcs academy is\was run by mark Smith and some ex forest player whos name escapes me alog with other ex pros and have been producing first teamers since they used our blue print.
Our much vaunted set up has produced two players that aee capable of playing at championship or above in 15 years. That's why we get less.

 

Sorry Deetee, they are not valid reasons for giving an obviously very talented young player away for a pittance. Shall we just roll over and have our belly tickled forever more?

 

I think that you have missed my point. The way that a second tier club maximises the fee for a player is not by hanging on to him, increasing his pay to realistic levels in order to compensate him for not going to the Premiership and hopes for his talent in an otherwise poor side to be recognised by a top Premiership club, prepared to pay a fee that is substantially beyond an offer that which is on the table. It is to get what you can now, and include substantial add on clauses in the expectation that he will continue to improve and that Everton will be tempted eventually to cash in by selling to one of the big fish. There is absolutely no chance that Barnsley could sell directly to a big fish for that massive fee. My reaction at the time was that a £3m fee was reasonable for a player with much potential, but with so few appearances. We should not forget our reactions at the time, even when they are subsequently proven by hindsight to be wrong.

As I keep saying, my point is not that I want to go on labouring something that was already within the public domain. My point is that Cryne and Mansford used something already in the public domain in order to deflect attention away from current management performance. The potency of this strategy is illustrated by the fact that this board is full of the fee received for John Stones, and current issues have fallen by the wayside.

 

Great credit in my view to WSB for hosting/organising the thing. It's difficult to ask tough questions without becoming passionate, bordering on hostile. Presumably, WSB would like to repeat the exercise in future, so it's necessary to keep things on a civil/courteous level. I also don't think that whether we got 3M or 2.2M for Stones is huge in the scheme of things - as Red Rain says (and as I said last night) the crucial question now is the extent of the sell-on clause. Everton could take JS and polish him up into a Premiership/England player - we couldn't. So the sell-on terms are the thing.

I also think fair play to Ben and PC for willingly attending what could potentially have been a difficult meeting. I think Ben is doing his best within his terms of reference, and PC deserves our ongoing gratitude for his shoring up of the club.

Having said all that, what exercises me most about last night is that we are still getting mixed messages. PC loves the club, and thinks it deserves to be in the Championship. Yet he would sell to the right buyer, or give it away to the fans if they came up with the right business plan. So is he wanting to take the club forward, or to offload it? The fans' co-op is actually a total red herring, because there can be no business plan whereby the fans put in the shortfall which PC is apparently covering.

And similarly with Ben: we want to get back up and to draw more crowds, but there still seems to be a focus on transforming the useful players into saleable assets. How can you build a team like that? Isn't this still the impasse we reached with Mark Robins? Won't we bugger up the next young manager's (Lee's) enthusiasm and commitment if we carry on like this?

So still some big questions for me arising from last night.

 

Was anything mentioned about Mansfords claim we've got the worst behaved fans in the country. I haven't seen where he's substantiated that claim anywhere , and bottle tops anyone ask about bottle tops

 

It's very worrying that the most important people at our club ie the board were the only ones who couldn't see how good Stones was.

 

Please tell me that someone asked...if the board are unable to spot a player of Stones' ability, then surely they're not capable of appointing managers.

 

Corporate slag.

 

To be fair to them it is the 'professionals' that give the owner advice if they were saying £2.2 was a fair price how would Pat sat in his Algarve villa having not seen him know any different. As with Ashley Ward I understand Dennis would have settled for £2.5m but Hendrie told him to hold out for more

 

So why do Posh get top dollar?

 

They didn't have two Bolton silly chuffs and Crossroads Benny Rowing advising on transfers

 

As I keep saying, my point is not that I want to go on labouring something that was already within the public domain. My point is that Cryne and Mansford used something already in the public domain in order to deflect attention away from current management performance. The potency of this strategy is illustrated by the fact that this board is full of the fee received for John Stones, and current issues have fallen by the wayside.[/QUOTE]


That's not how I read it at all. I think Cryne was asked a question and in the spirit of being open with the fans, answered it, regardless of whether it was public domain or not. And let's be fair, even if the accounts did provide clues as to the correct figure, not many fans beyond a minority on this board were privy to that anyway. I do have an issue with the implication that Flitcroft didn't rate/appreciate Stones and this scoring system nonsense which I see merely as a backside covering exercise due to a huge mistake made by the regime at the time.

I don't think it was a sinister PR exercise to deflect attention from the current debacle though. If anything, the Flitcroft comments and scoring system stuff has raised more questions that it has provided answers and simply creates more ammunition for those critical of how the club is being run. So if it was intentional, it backfired spectacularly.

As for the Stones deal itself, I've laboured my opinion ad nauseum on the topic. But to summarise, we ballsed up by publicly declaring 3m for him (why not summat daft like 10 mil?...see Jordan Rhodes for a precedent) We ballsed up by accepting two identical offers rather than start a bidding war. We ballsed up by selling too early, though in this matter I do accept that it was a hard decision to make and I'm not naively thinking we could keep him, I just think we were in a position to play hardball. It wouldn't surprise me if we also ballsed up by not demanding a sell on clause.

 

It was Nowt to do with Hendrie. JD just had big enough balls to bluff his way to £4.5 m